Google Email Fatal Evidence in Apple Vs. Samsung Trial

Google’s influence on Samsung products was decisive for jurors, who granted Apple more than $1 billion in damages in the company’s patent lawsuit against the South Korean manufacturer, filed in San Jose, California.According to Velvin Hogan, foreman of the nine-member panel, the jurors carried out a meticulous process arriving at the final decision that Samsung willfully violated Apple’s patents. However, before they could determine whether it was willful or not, they needed go through the evidence once again. So, they read the-emails again. Unfortunately, for Samsung, the emails included an internal Samsung message that gave Google’s guidelines on how to change the products to look less like Apple’s.

Considering a willful infringement, Judge Lucy Koh can triple the damages in September when she holds a hearing at Apple’s request to ban some of the South Korean manufacturer’s products.

Samsung has used the Android mobile OS to build its Smartphones, which became so popular that it grabbed the No. 1 position in the global Smartphone market in the first quarter of 2012, and maintained it through the second quarter. However, what made the company successful, turned out to be fatal as well: during the four-week trial, Apple presented email evidence dated February 16, 2010, describing minutes from a design meeting that was sent to “pass along only a few comments from Senior Designer who went into the Google meeting yesterday,” the message reads. “Since it is too similar to Apple, make it noticeably different, starting with the front side”, the jurors read, referring to one of the Samsung tablets.

But this isn’t the only fatal piece of evidence: a second email included 30 Samsung employees on February 22, 2010 as cited by Bloomberg.

“I am notifying you of the team leader’s directives from the executives’ meeting yesterday. The sixth item on the list addresses a need to “respond to the issue of design similarity for the S series,” which Samsung designer Kim Jin Soo testified was a reference to the company’s S series of smartphones.“Google is demanding distinguishable design vis-à-vis the iPad,” according to the e-mail. “Consider design distinguishability for the items demanded by Google while maintaining the current design, and in regards to each carrier’s demands.”

The group deliberated without any formal breaks for lunches, and an hour longer than scheduled on two of the three days.